19TH Sunday after Pentecost 2025
October 19, 2025All Saint’s Sunday 2025
November 2, 2025Texts: Romans 3:19-28, John 8:31-36
Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
If one is observant of human nature, one realizes that we are not often the best judges of our own character, whether for good or ill. We can overestimate or underestimate the effect of our actions or our motivations. Each generation thinks they know better than the last, to then fall into the same old patterns. Sometimes we don’t recognize we are stuck in a pattern at all. Humans are lifelong students of the school of hard-knocks, what we call in Puerto Rico, “aprender a cantazos”, meaning to learn by being beaten up by life. I confess, I’m one of those people! But even in my mistakes, I can still hear my parents say: we love you because you are our son, we don’t desire that you learn by being beaten up by life! We want what’s best for you. God, in a sense, is like that too. But we are stubborn, and we think we know what’s good, we think we know what makes us free, but we don’t often grasp the full picture of things, we don’t have the God point-of view, and thus we fall into our atomized sense of freedom. Is freedom gained by accumulation of money? Is freedom achieved by the acquisition of power? Is freedom simply the ability to make decisions or to feel secure? Perhaps from a human point of view, these things give us certain benefits and they are aspects of freedom. But they do not give us the whole breadth of spiritual freedom, often they close our spirit by reducing freedom to this or that accidental factor of life; as if freedom was a piece of property for the few who are born lucky, or for those who are willing to take it by force. They obscure the freedom we truly yearn for, the freedom to love our neighbors as ourselves, the freedom to embrace the world beyond our own self-interest the freedom to receive everything as an
opportunity to love God and neighbor, the freedom from being enslaved to the power of sin and death, and live in forgiveness, love and mercy, the freedom to change the course of our life towards the good of all. The freedom the world offers is not the true freedom offered by God in Jesus Christ. We define freedom in reference to the unfreedom of others. But Christ’s freedom says, we are all subject to forms of unfreedom, we are all in the same boat in different ways, and we need to affirm the ultimate change that God has done for us in Christ to realize that all of us are called to freedom through the love of God in Christ, that every human being no matter their circumstance, can grasp this gift freely and live into the freedom God has made available to us.
In our Gospel reading today, the Jewish believers that were listening to Jesus were taken aback precisely by this assertion of Jesus, that perhaps what they thought gave them freedom, their identity as descendants of Abraham, was not true freedom at all. Jesus tells them that no, their family heritage does not guarantee true freedom, not their nationality, because all human beings are actually enslaved by something that runs much deeper than that. All human beings are enslaved by sin and death. By itself, humanity is unable to remain in righteousness, meaning being in right relationship with God and the world. And why is this so? A careful review of the social-spiritual situation was enough: the oppression of the widow and the orphan, the marginalization of the sick and foreigner, the inequality between rich and poor, the suspicion among neighbors. Yes, they were descendants of Abraham, heirs of God’s covenantal promises, yet by virtue of that identity alone it did not guarantee that their heart was free from sin’s grasp. But Jesus’ Word, which He was asking those who
believed to abide by, that Word was going deeper, it was breaking barriers, it was uniting the covenantal promises of the people Israel to the whole world. The Word of God, the truth incarnate revealed in the life of Jesus Christ, was going to the root of the problem of the human heart: “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” What good are our allegiances, or what we say our name is, if our heart is so far away from God? If the fruit of our life is apart from that Word of Truth revealed in Jesus? As Paul says in our Epistle reading today, “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Indeed there is no distinction, there is no superior human being before God. We all need God to liberate us, for the person who is captive cannot unbind themselves unless the One with the ability to save comes in to break us out from our captivity. And this is what God does in Christ Jesus. By Jesus life, death, and resurrection, God has set the account right because He desires us to be in a state of reconciliation, He desires for us to live in His peace molded by love.
So how important it is to reach for our humility, to see ourselves not apart from other human beings in their spiritual struggle, but as fellow recipients of a gift that liberates us from sin and death, as fellow prisoners broken free from our cells of hatred and callousness! The great jewel of Reformation Christianity is the rediscovery and the emphasis that we are not called to heap the work of our salvation upon ourselves, because indeed, by individualism we cannot do it. Humanity’s liberation is a work of divine welfare. It is about simply putting our trust in God’s grace to free us. That in Jesus Christ, God has provided the means by which we should live, that we should simply call and look at Him. His example, His forgiveness, His love, are what convicts us
and unchains us from sin, it makes us want to love like He does, it makes us want to please God, because He showed us what true life and freedom are about. Because the way Jesus lived is true freedom. To love as Jesus loved, is to be free of all constraints to love and bring life to the world. We need to follow the path that the liberator has made to leave our captivity. How much is our love stifled by the supposed things that give us freedom! Whether that is our social status, or our money, or our nationality, or our history, the love of God unbinds us to love beyond those strictures and touch the heart of our fellow humans. Reformation Christianity has had the calling from God to never forget that it is God who saves, it is He who has uplifted us, and He does so because He loves us, because being graceful is Who He is. We do not point to ourselves, we preserve the humility of saying, everything I have is a gift from God, what blessed life it is to know Him! I am just a creature, but God is lovingly mindful of me.
Jesus said: “The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” This is to say, you no longer belong to sin, you no longer belong to your worst imaginings, you no longer belong to what brings you down. By grasping the hand of Jesus, you pass into a new belonging, a belonging of true liberation. You were made part of an inheritance that was not yours to begin with, but because the owner of the house loves you so much, He has made room for you in His house. No longer you need to look at what your achievements are, no longer you need to depend on what your last name is, no longer do you need to grasp at the straws of worldly power or money to justify the value of your existence. You are enough, God says. You life has more value
than any of those things. Your life is worth dying on a cross for. Look at Jesus, and there is your belonging. Look at Jesus, and there is your real freedom, a freedom that is rooted in knowing that I need nothing to do to prove my worth. I am Beloved. And then, what a gift it is to let others that they are Beloved too! And how great to live in the footsteps of Him that calls me Beloved! I am free from all those things I labored for to bring me worth, my worth comes from God’s Love for the whole world in Christ Jesus. My worth is the worth of every other human being by the grace of God. My worth is that I’m called to love and be merciful as I have received. The truth of the Gospel of Christ is not some dreary reality, it is the light that shines in the darkness and allows me to break free from all bonds of sin and oppression to love everything in this world freely, as I myself have been loved freely. What an amazing gift we have received in bearing the Word, Jesus Christ! So be disciples, continue in His Word, and show others who Has given you room in the Father’s house, because there is room for them also. And better yet, there is a seat in the banquet that has their name and your name on it. Thanks be to God for that. Let us then pray: